by Mike Telin
When the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet last appeared in Cleveland in March of 2015, that occasion coincided with the release of their CD New Renaissance. When John Dearman, Matthew Greif, William Kanengiser, and Scott Tennant return to the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society’s International Series on Saturday, November 3 at 7:30 pm at First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, there won’t be a new album, but you can hear the new work that Pat Metheny wrote for them. Tickets are available online.
“We met Pat at a guitar festival in Montana about four years ago,” Kanengiser said during a recent telephone conversation. “Unbeknownst to us, he was a closet LAGQ fan, which was a shock and an honor because we idolize him. He said, ‘Hey, I might write a piece for you guys,’ and we said that would be awesome.”
As it is with busy people, Kanengiser said the Quartet did not hear from Metheny for a while — until an email arrived from him saying that he was indeed going to write that piece. Although the LAGQ members expected to receive a 10- to 12-minute work, a month later the composer/guitarist contacted them saying he had sketched out a 6-movement, 25-minute piece.
During its more than three decades as an ensemble, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet has generated a huge and loyal following. LAGQ’s local fans supplied the group with a large, enthusiastic audience on Saturday evening, March 21 at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights for a two-hour show that touched nearly every possible corner of the repertoire with the group’s forty magic fingers.